Liberator #1
Created and Written by Matt Miner
Art by Javier Sanchez Aranda, Joaquin Pereyra, and Yasmin Liang
Covers by Yildiray Cinar, Joel Gomez, Rod Reis, Tim Seely, Beth Sotello
Black Mask Studios
Release Date: June 19, 2013
Cover Price: $3.50

I can recall many moons ago (I won’t tell you how many because it would make me feel old), obsessive over my favorite comic book superheroes, pondering about what it would be like if someone was able to take these elements of the fantastic heroes and place them into a realistic, and believable context.

While we’ve seen Christopher Nolan bring a realistic grit to the Batman concept in film, and the Mark Millar/John Romita Jr. team brings a realism context in the shape of Kick-Ass, we’ve not yet (really) come across a “real” superhero with a “real” cause. And by that cause, I’m referring to something other than supervillain crimefighting.

Enter Liberator: a new series funded by Kickstarter, and released by Black Mask comics that takes the concept of a realistic hero (no costumes, just ski masks and dark apparel), and places them against a real cause they believe worth fighting for.

The Social Blend podcast has released its regular year-end special, The Best of 2011. The episode is a collection of some of the memorable and funniest moments from shows through the year.

2011 was a bit of a challenging year for Social Blend. We’d traditionally followed content at Mixx.com for our show nucleus; but the beginning of the year saw the announcement they were closing down their classic site as they’d been acquired by UberMedia. From there, we created our own social news site, MixxingBowl.com; while the Mixx guys moved on to establish Chime.in.

Late last Thursday evening protesters from New York’s Occupy Wall Street took their movement to an unexpected location: the set of an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

The protesters staged a “Mockpuation” at the city’s Foley Square where a replica of the movement’s former camp in Zuccotti Park had been set up, including a kitchen and library exactly like the real deal once had. The set was being used as the backdrop for an upcoming episode of SVU partially inspired by the Occupy movement.

You can watch a video of the protest here below.

A bit of a conflict has developed between highly regarded comic book creators Alan Moore (Watchmen, V For Vendetta) and Frank Miller (Sin City, 300). Instead of having opposing perspectives on something comic book related, however, the two are fired up over something a little more political in nature: the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It began back in November, when Miller had what could be considered to be some rather blunt words for the many protesters who are currently occupying Wall Street in hopes of standing up against corporate greed and corruption, and making it more visible to the unaware. Miller’s comments were then responded to a couple of days ago by Moore, who, as you might have assumed, is on the polar opposite side of Miller’s opinions…and also his work in general.

Check out both Miller and Moore’s comments, see why Moore is now joining something called Occupy Comics, and check out a video for it below.

Last week comic book writer-artist Frank Miller decided to share his opinions on the steadily-growing Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to many major cities around the world. Miller, who’s best known for his acclaimed run on Marvel’s Daredevil — which gave the series its largest readership since its debut — as well as the classic and influential Batman miniseries The Dark Knight Returns and his own creations Sin City and Hard-Boiled, posted his thoughts at his blog. You can read the posting entitled “Anarchy” in full here below.